Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Good for us ...

The owner of the New York Islanders hockey team threatened to move the team out of New York if the people of Long Island didn't build him a new arena to the tune of $400 million. This in a place that already has some of the highest property taxes in the country. The referendum was yesterday and the message was given. "See yas!":

Voters in a suburban New York community already paying some of the highest property taxes in the country overwhelmingly rejected a referendum Monday to borrow $400 million for the construction of a new hockey arena and ballpark.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, the referendum failed 56 percent to 43 percent, according to unofficial returns from the Nassau County Board of Elections.

Supporters of the referendum called it a last-ditch effort to keep the New York Islanders playing in the Nassau Coliseum. The team's lease expires in 2015 and the hockey team's owner, Charles Wang, has hinted he may have to move off the team off Long Island unless a new facility is built to replace the 39-year-old building.

...


Don't let the door hit ya in the ass.

And a note: You know he ain't moving the Islanders out of the biggest sports market in the country. Let's see him get the same ticket prices and TV deals in Frozen Butt, Saskatchewan or some shit.

3 comments:

BadTux said...

Yah, wish we'd been that smart here in Santa Clara, where they're gonna raid the municipal electric utility's capital improvement fund (which has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars of profits over the past decade despite the fact that the city's electric power rates are 40% lower than the surrounding PG&E area) to build a new Taj Mahal for the San Francisco 49'ers. Who aren't even gonna do us the favor of changing their name to the Santa Clara 49'ers once they move into our sports palace. Means higher electric rates in the future to rebuild that fund (which is for replacing the municipal power plant when it gets to its end of life), but hey, we get to say we have some *other* city's sports team playing in our city, yay. So it goes. Glad to see Lawnguyland ain't that stupid to subsidize billionaire sports team owners.

- Badtux the Sporting Penguin

Gordon said...

The Sacto Kings are pullin' the same shit. They threatened to move but nobody wants 'em, I think.

Fixer said...

... Sacto Kings ...

Whazzat, b-ball?